Karin waved her hand from her seat to bring up the translucent holographic displays up. The hatch to the pilot's nest slowly closed and allowed the internal lights to increase the contrast on the displays till it was nearly opaque. She began tapping away at the keys that set at the head of the armrests while her eyes darted from screen to screen. Her tired eyes reflected back the soft glow with the low light aggravating her headache.
The auxiliary control system started up, allowing her eyes to control and illuminate vast amounts of information. Her incessant scanning proved useful as dozens of screens popped up and disappeared at a rapid rate until her gaze fixed on the transceiver system menu. She parsed through the enormous list of options until she found the sub-menu for the scanning antenna mode.
Here she set up the bandwidth and frequency ranges while at the same time instructing the nanite circuit links to repurpose themselves into information bridges to ferry the strength, direction and frequency data to the navigation computers. The patches took root , the nanite slivers branched and multiplied as they spread over the circuits.
Progress was made as she took the data Ryuki gave to her and began to scan for the pings that he had received. She radioed over to Ros to apply the same settings to the thinktank and set it up to discern which signal was associated to the supply boxes.
Now the only thing left was to wait and to hope that this would work. The wasteland before them was nearly insurmountable. Anything they may find might be buried so far down that it would take too much power to excavate them. Even then, what strength would they have left? Between the thoughts of failure and the coughing fits, the dead air seemed to press down on them like a coming storm. All they could hear was the dull ripping of the ice around them as the sub-light drives burned through the ice shelf.
Barry watched over Ross's shoulder, not so much to investigate what he was doing. He was looking plainly as a pretense to sitting inside the still warm crew cab of the think tank. Even with the hard suit on, the cold chill was still spreading its frozen daggers over his body.
Success was slow ,as each return ping needed to be processed against the database Ryuki had put together with his command mech. Slowly a map formed of the likely locations where the supplies would be. Would it be the rations and medicine they needed? It was hard to tell as they had no idea which was the right signal. At the least, Barry thought, they would have something rather than nothing.
Ryuki noticed that of the signals he received back, one stood out. It was strong from what he could tell, yet the same signal seemed to fluctuate for the others. Perhaps it was quite a distance away or buried under something reflecting its transmission. It didn't matter now. They had to take the risk and get to it, there was no time to go searching for the other containers.
Once the map was complete, Ryuki gave the order to go for the strong distant transmission. For them, something far away would be as little as 100 m in range. It was the terrain that made it so difficult. Their mechs were beaten and bruised and with no maintenance crews to fix them, they had to continue on limping. But these warmachines were designed to survive, that was the one thing Ryuki counted on. Even if the magazines run out, the plasmathrower fuel used up and the rockets spent, these giants would continue marching forward. Punching and kicking if they had to.
They set off from their perch for the climb down. It seemed that the container was at the base of the trash heap, making the journey not as difficult as they thought. Still, they would need to dig it out to gain access to its contents.
The think tank shot a set of grapple-anchors at the steel T at the summit. It began to rappel down in a very spider-like movement. Once it reached the base of the heap, it shot the other end of the anchors into the ground. With the cables fixed to the ground, it allowed Ryuki and Dizzy to use them as ziplines.
They grabbed hold of the nanofiber cables and descended rapidly. Their hands began to glow red as the friction burned through the blue anti-fouling paint used to keep the manipulator digits from rusting off. Sparks jumped out from their clenched fist as they raced down to the base.
A dust storm lifted up from where they landed. Bits and pieces of the heap came tumbling down from the shockwave of their impact. The thinktank though crawled down as a spider would, its legs stretching out and the clamps at the ends grabbing hold of the cliff side refuse.
As they settled at the bottom , the ship began to whine and groan. Something was giving way, steel bending under the force of the ship slowly tilting upward. Eventually it's nose would arch up through the ice shell. The base and the hangar above would be torn to shreds, the mechs and the labs alternatively sliced and crushed under the weight of the crashing ice.
The shards of ice would come crashing down on their abandoned base camp and swallow up the outpost they had evacuated. What the animals would do though was a different matter. They had seemed attracted to the heat of the ignited engines , perhaps looking for warmth that they had only met near the core of the planet. The giant ice-louse that walked the surface would have already noticed the tremors , slowly converging on this location. They probably thought there would be food, if they had the capacity to think. Ryuki didn't know for sure but after the last few days, it had become exceedingly clear that nothing was predictable.
The think-tank immediately began scanning using its ground-penetrating radar system. Although capable of detecting objects hidden under debris, the range was too short for an area wide scan. It crawled along with the others, wandering towards the expected location of the large cache while overcoming the quickly rusting wreckage that blocked their path.
Bits and pieces of the floor of above them continued to crash down. The crab-like creatures that attacked them were oddly absent in the debris. Perhaps they escaped but then where was the the strider? It was too big to have escaped. Maybe, Ryuki thought, it was destroyed in the fall. The striders were never built to take a fall, they were weapons platforms to be used as part of a vanguard of assault units. It wasn't built like the think-tanks or the tactical combat mechs , it wasn't built to scale buildings and maneuver through urban environments. There was no way to tell without searching intensely , something none of them had the leisure to do.
The thinktank synchronized with the mechs to match the radio triangulation to the radar image. Its computer array processed massive amounts of information in its attempt to match the sensor readings to any and all objects stored in its database. It scanned through the armored vehicle registry and cross-matched it to the partial data it collected of the wrecks. Mass, metal content , anything that would help it to identify the source of the signal.
The slow trudge across the broken landscape was silent apart from their footsteps. Each thud echoed into infinity, while the ground crunched under their collective weight. Ryuki scanned every wavelength around him in an attempt to spot suspicious movement but everything was dead. Nothing was moving. Their lights were only illuminating a small cone in front of them ,leaving the darkness to encroach on them. It nipped at them ,gnawed at it their heels. Shadows grasped at their bodies, their gripping cold penetrating through thick armor and piercing into their sickly bodies.
Wisps of cold circled around the mechanized legs. Droplets of frozen water freeze over to form a glassy sheen along the cracks and gashes on the armor. Exposed tubes and heat pipes drip with perspiration. As they walked , their machines shuddered . Bits fall off, a concerning development. It was hoped that none of the miscellaneous parts that were being shed were important.
The ground radar was began to ping rapidly as they walked over the remains of an armored personnel carrier. A large object was detected, matching the location of the radio signal. A holographic representation of the object appeared in front of Karin . It was a large shipping crate much like the ones that a cargo ship would carrier. The radar was fine enough to see the ridges along the sides of the container and picked up the faint outlines of the locking bolts on the door.
She relayed to the others that this was it. This is the supply container. She hoped but she didn't say outright. It was in her voice though, that subtle tremor that one has when the fear of the truth overtakes the triumph over adversity. There had to be medicine and food in there, she thought. Anything less would doom them to a slow and painful death as their bodies succumb to the fluid building in their lungs.
They began to dig, with open claws and palms. They tossed chunks and plates aside as quickly as possible. Dust rose up from their work along with the remnants of the ships internal structure. Pieces crumbled in their hands ,brittled by frost.
The door to the container stuck out from underneath a warped bulkhead plate. Just the corner peaked out from under all the wreckage but just enough to make a positive ID. They doubled their effort in their dig even with their machines straining under the effort. It seemed as if the mechs were whining in pain as their joints began to grind against their bearings.
It was bigger than they expected. The container was more like the size of a small transport ship. Something like a stealth drop ship with enough space for a lot of equipment and troops. Two heavy bars locked the door in place with a set of large crossbars jamming them shut.
Ryuki grabbed one of the bars and began to bend it out of shape . The tip of the bar slipped out from the metal eye that held it in place once it broke in half. Ryuki did the same to the other bar while Barry went to work on the joining crossbars.
The door still didn't open though. Ryuki zoomed in on the edges and spotted the weld marks. Someone had really wanted to keep this container sealed shut. He wondered if whatever was in there was supposed to stay sealed inside.
Before he could react, Karin began to unweld the door with the utility torch of her thinktank. The welding arm extended from out of the thorax, from under a retracting panel . The thin arm was jointed at three places and sat atop a rotating turret that lifted up from the compartment.
Slowly it worked its way through the welds while Ryuki wondered if this was a mistake. Whatever they would find could very well change their odds of survival whether for good or ill. In the end though, their time was running shorts and risks were needed to be taken if any of them were to see home again.
